Worth checking in with Juan Cole for the customary skepticism:
The headlines are all saying that the law permits Baathists back into public life. It seems actually to demand that they be fired or retired on a pension, and any who are employed are excluded from sensitive ministries.
My attempt to make sense of it is here.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/01/the-re-baathification-law/221350/
